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overnight proofing of shaped loaves

October 21, 2012 - 7:59pm

toddvp

overnight proofing of shaped loaves

Hi! Long time lurker and occasional responder, but I've been spending a lot of time lately on the forums trying to really nail down my sometimes haphazard technique. I've been using baguettes as my practice bread to really kick my butt, and they've improved a lot with different tweaks and techniques (I can share more info if anyone's interested).

My question today is about overnight proofing. In Tartine Bread, Chad Robertson talks about his friend who lets the loaves proof overnight on the counter and bakes in the morning. I think that would be an ideal way to proof the baguettes so they could go right in the oven when I get up, but I'm worried about over-proofing and missing the ideal window. Has anyone tried this? What are some ideas to keep the final rise slow?

Second best option is overnight proofing in the fridge, but everyone seems to feel like loaves need time to warm up, which defeats the "instantly in the oven" part of the equation. Has anyone baked loaves that were retarded overnight in the fridge and put almost literally straight in the oven? Or is the warming up time non-negotiable?

Any problems with loaves drying out during either of these approaches?

Thanks! Looking forward to your input. Here's a picture of one of the better batches lately as I've nailed the art down a little better:

I have questioned the fridge to oven process before and got a simple answer as this: Jeffrey Hamelman suggests it so how can it be wrong?

I still haven't tried it myself, but I guess that should be true. If a master baker suggests it in a recipe, I'm sure it would be fine, for that particular recipe. I personally like the idea of letting it come to room temp at least.

I am from the school of thought that a loaf should be allowed to come up to room temp. prior to being baked. Not only thought but from experience too but I suppose it depends upon the shape of a loaf. I would imagine that a baguette could be popped right into the oven because they are so thin and long but I know with boules the crusts will dry out before the center of the loaf gets baked....but I guess one could lower the baking temps. and all might be 'done' at the same time. Easier for me to allow room temp. time prior to baking.

Overproofing: To manage that I would simply lower the amount of leaven you use in your loaf or fiddle with the temp. using the refrig. or counter top. I use whole grains in my baking so I would be courting disaster if I were to leave a loaf on the counter overnight with a leaven containing more than 8 -10% of the total flour and temps. above 68°. Also obviously different doughs contain different ingredients all of which come into play during fermentation....so my suggestion is to experiment...experiment and experiment some more until you find what works in your kitchen. It is only flour and water and a bit of salt :-)

Is just old. I have tested both ways extensively and found that if the loaves were well proofed they baked perfectly straight out of the oven. Coming from an engineering and science based reality (yes I am a Democrat) and being a new bread baker I'm open to most things except passing on old wive's tales without testing and understanding why things either work or do not work. Try it you might like it.

my plan was to set the oven timer so it's already hot when I get up. Normally I get the dough/loaves out and proof for a few hours to bring it up to temp, but I'm just seeing how uber-efficient the process can be for the sake of schedule.

When it was cooler, I let it proof overnight on the counter but as soon as it warmed up a tiny bit, I had to overnight proof in the fridge, otherwise it would overproof,. I pull it out of the fridge while the oven is heating up and have never had any problems.

"Has anyone baked loaves that were retarded overnight in the fridge and put almost literally straight in the oven?"

... I regularly retard shaped loaves, boules, whatever - overnight in the fridge, then wham straight into a hot oven in the morning, or whenever it is convenient later that day. No warming up. No dilly-dallying. Hardcore! Whip dough out of fridge, mist, flour, slash - and slam into the furnace it goes. No problemo.

The beauty of this approach is the cold dough is lovely and firm, so you get nice clean scoring, no tearing or tugging. In fact the proofed dough - even very high hydration dough - is so chilled it doesn't flump outwards once released from the banneton or couche, so more rise in the oven than dough proofed at room temperature. And the firmness of this cold dough allows me to nudge, shove, coax it onto the peel without any injury to the shape. The other, and very considerable benefit, is that providing I've kept my yeast levels on the spartan side, I can leave the dough in the chiller until I'm ready to cook - giving far greater flexibility than room-temperature proofed dough which demands to be baked when and as it is ready, and the baker's convenience be damned.

Retarding in the fridge doesn't dry the dough or crust if you pop the proofed loaves in their bannetons, inside a plastic bag folded over a couple of times at the top; the fold held in place with a couple of paperclips. Even a couche can be chilled this way if placed in 2 large plastic shopping bags. Just pop one on from the right, one from the left, so they overlap.

I like the control over when I can bake using the fridge to retard proofing, it is liberating. Wrapping proofing baskets is a major key to having a nice dough in the morning afternoon or evening which is easier to handle and ready to bake straight out of the fridge.

Are you scaling your ingredients to the gram and what do you call high hydration? Using KAF flours depending on the percentage of whole wheat used I can't get much past about 77%-78% total hydration or the shaped and proofed loaves are too wet to handle and do not retain their shape in the oven. With total hydration levels over 71% or so I use a heavy cast iron FO (LOL! French Oven) in the appropriate size but with less than about 71% total hydration I can bake loaves free form and still retain good shape.

... if only I could scale ingredients to the very gram! Alas, the motion of the ocean renders a nonsense out of pernickety-exact scale readings. But I do manage a rough approximation, between waves and roll, that's useful enough.

You ask: "what do you call high hydration?". I answer, 75%-80% if we're talking dough raised purely with wild yeast. The reason being that since sourdough gets wetter as it ferments, I don't dare venture further. But slack doughs are made far easier by virtue of having one fridge that runs at 2* C. Its shiversome environment slows yeast activity to an absolute crawl, and gives firmness to the dough long enough to peel, slash and wallop into the oven without slumping. Just so long as you veer slightly towards under- rather than over-proofing.

I do it all the time in the fridge and on the counter with medium round loaves using the usual 8" or 9" proofing baskets. Counter and fridge retarded loaves if well proofed can go straight into the oven without the need to warm up. Overnight proofing works great on the counter or retarded and tastes even better especially if you build a sweet wild yeast starter and help it with some instant yeast.

With pure wild yeast doughs with their often more variable proofing time I found that variability controled when I could bake the loaves if maximum rise is important. With a wild yeast getting maximum rise is critical for crumb texture. The best solution I found was to either carefully consider bulk and proof timing with wild yeast doughs leaving a large window of time for proofing or build a hybrid dough using very small amounts (0.25% to 0.75% read that as one quater of one percent to three quaters of one percent depending on the percentage of wild yeast and overnight proof time desired) of commercial yeast combined with a wild yeast for overnight proofing in the fridge for a 100% reliable proof.

Tried it this morning, but they came out dense and flat. I think the issue was more that the loaves were underproofed (almost non-proofed) due to the coldness/slowness of fermentation. I had the dough in the fridge before shaping last night, and although I gave it a couple hours to warm up and start rising before they went back in the fridge, I think it wasn't enough to get them to where they needed to be.

At some stage, whether in bulk ferment or in final proof, the yeast needs a good few hours out of the fridge to do its thing. Some folk prefer to retard during bulk ferment; others(like me) find it more convenient to retard during final proof. So long as you allow those yeasties some frolic in the warmth one way or t'other, it doesn't matter - yer takes yer choice!

And if you decide to retard during final proofing and want to bake straight from the fridge, you may still need to let the shaped dough sit out on the counter for a while before its overnight stint in the chiller. It's all down to ambient temps and how much yeast you've included. You'll get to know by feel and sight when the dough is ready for chilling, but it will likely take a little experimentation at first.

but cannot afford it any more with two kids away at college. We used to race our Tartan 10 (10 meter long ULDB) out of Marina del Rey here in SoCal every week for almost ten years sometimes twice a week in the summer for some of the local annual regattas and over nights to Catalina Island. I rigged it myself bringing all lines into the cockpit on clutches so I could race it single handed (no auto pilot and me with a tiller boat!) with the Single Handed Sailing Club. That was a lot of fun and turned out to be very handy once we had the kids and one of us had to mind the rug rats while the other handled the boat. I miss that boat she was fast for a small boat but she could point and surf even with that tiny chute!

tried again this morning, with much better results. Good oven spring and shape. I had some issues with crust color and scoring, but I think those again are on my side rather than the fridge-to-oven technique in itself.

Did it! I used a better formula (strongly based on PR's poolish ciabatta from BBA), proofed the loaves almost to complete before putting them in the fridge, and baked within a couple of minutes of taking them out in the morning. Turned out fanstastic-- good spring, crumb, color, etc. If there are any issues, it's a slight thickness of crust from having such a long time to dry out, but it's definitely not a dealbreaker.

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